Scrapped metal — The new “Transformers” movie isn’t good enough to be mindless fun

“Deliver Us From Evil”, a horror movie based solely on the jump scare, reminds us how uninventive many films are today. “Transformers: Age of Extinction” not only confirms this sad fact, but it seems bent on making sure it holds a place with its uninventive brethren.

There’s no point in summarizing the plot. The filmmakers didn’t care enough to have a plot – let alone an original one. All that’s needed are keywords: Optimus Prime, Mark Wahlberg, sexy teenager and explosions.

This film could have been fun. You can’t expect a Michael Bay film to be anything more than mindless, but you can hope to be entertained. And with their incredibly cool premises, you’d think Bay’s “Transformers” movies would stand above other films, like the Transformers themselves, as towering mechanisms of awesome. They do not.

The same applies to the fourth installment in the series. There is no passion in “Age of Extinction.” You feel trapped while watching the film. You think to yourself that you’ll have a good time while watching it. Then three hours of passionless directing, acting and visual effects goes by and you want to bang your head against a wall just to be sure you can still feel and haven’t become as robotic as the film’s protagonists.

This is one of the most excruciatingly boring action films, period. It goes on and on without an intermission or even so much as a visual break. The film can’t sit still and it throws everything it can at the audience. But it fails to throw us anything in the way of humor, joy, fun or anything resembling humanity.

The only thing you feel anything for throughout this nearly three-hour picture is a cute little dinosaur that barely escapes death by evil metal lava. And it has less than a minute of screen time.

You certainly don’t feel for the characters – if you can call them characters. They only exist because Bay thinks we need to connect with someone who looks human. Unfortunately, none of these people are allowed to be human. Any sort of character development or emotional moments are cut very short in order to get back to the “plot.”

For example, just before the film goes into its second act, Mark Wahlberg’s daughter (played by Nicola Peltz) is almost killed by federal agents. He watches helplessly as a man takes a gun to her head and she cries in terror. Later, Wahlberg reflects on that moment when he almost lost his daughter. His reflection takes up less time than is given to that cute little dinosaur from earlier. Gotta keep on the move!

Optimus Prime even goes a little psychotic. He shoots at federal agents when they turn against him and the other Autobots. But that’s boring too. You’ll find yourself wishing Prime would actually kill a whole bunch of humans just to keep you from falling asleep.

“Age of Extinction” is too long and boring to even be considered mindless fun. It’s mediocre tripe that takes itself way too seriously.